It's a plot that doesn't need Shelock Holmes to deduce what's happening. In the same week that Stripe launched its new USDC payment and account products, Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 network backed by Coinbase, suddenly increased its transaction fees by 30 times. Many people in the crypto community believe this timing is not a coincidence. Stripe’s USDC launch is a big deal because it lets businesses all over the world send, receive, and hold stablecoins at much lower fees than traditional card payments. Stripe even chose to use Base as one of its main networks for these stablecoin transactions, promising fast and cheap transfers.

However, just as Stripe’s stablecoin services went live, Base raised its fees dramatically. This is unusual for a Layer 2 network, which is supposed to offer lower fees than Ethereum itself. Some people think Base did this to profit from the expected surge in transactions as Stripe users started moving money through the network. Since all the sequencer fee revenue goes to Coinbase, it looks like they might be trying to cash in on the extra activity. Others suggest Base might have raised fees to manage congestion or test the network under heavy use, but a 30X increase is so high that it would likely push away many users, which doesn’t make sense if the goal is to attract new business through Stripe.

The fact that Coinbase and Stripe are close partners makes the situation even more suspicious. Some believe the fee hike was coordinated for strategic reasons, maybe to control how much activity hits the network during Stripe’s launch. Overall, the crypto community is frustrated and skeptical, seeing this move as a way for Base and Coinbase to prioritize their own profits over the needs of users and the promise of affordable, decentralized payments. The timing and scale of the fee increase strongly suggest it’s connected to Stripe’s USDC rollout, and it has sparked a lot of debate about transparency and fairness in the crypto world.